TF2 science - Rockets

Throughout this guide I will discover what hides in TF2, or in simpler terms, describe game mechanics in an easy to understand format.
This guide is all about ROCKETS, shooting them, dodging them, everything. It will be continuously developed and amended, so be sure to check on the guide for updated information.

Rocket projectile

Normal rockets (ones that come out of the rocket launcher, black box, original) are easy to understand. They have a fixed area where damage is dealt, known as the blast radius.

Here are some key points:

• Rockets have a blast radius of 169 hammer unit
  
• Regular rockets travel at 1100 hammer units per second
  
• Black Box, The Original and the Rocket Launcher all fire regular rockets
  
• Maximum damage: 112
  
• Base Damage: 90
  
• Minimum damage: 24

Damage

Obviously we want our rockets to do the most damage. There are factors that affect how much damage our rocket does

• Distance from blast radius
  
• Distance from player
  
• Crits/mini-crits
  
• Damage vulnerability items (ie. candy cane)

Blast Radius

Through my testing, I have found that you can deal damage with a rocket up to 169 hammer units away! This is not what I expected as I thought it would be 146 hammer units. I have tested numerous times and have came to the same conclusion. Either most people are wrong or my testing is flawed. If you can explain why this happens do not be afraid to tell me.

EDIT figured it out. Your projectile hitbox is 24 units wider than normal on all sides. So the explosion is off by 24 hammer units. 169 - 24 = 146ish. Technically yes the wiki is right. Practically however no it is 169hu still.

But what exactly is a hammer unit (or HU)? Put simply, a hammer unit is a unit of measurement used by all source engine games. It is called that because of the hammer level editor used to create levels for TF2. Think of it as inches for TF2. Your position on the map and levels are all measured and created based on hammer units. Things based on position will be referenced with this term.


Check out my video for a better understanding of the splash radius!

At the center of the blast, rockets do 100% of possible damage and at the edge of the explosion do 50% maximum. The closer the enemy is to the rocket, the more damage you do - makes sense right?

Put simply, about every 34 hammer units away from the rocket, the damage of the rocket decreases by 10% until 170 hammer units where damage is zero always. So if you are 34 hammer units away from a rocket, instead of 90 damage it will do 10% of that, 81 damage.

Rocket Speed

Regular rockets travel at approximately 1100 hammer units every second. To put this in perspective, a scout runs at 400 hammer units every second and a soldier runs at 240 hammer units every second. We will explore this in a later chapter.

You can achieve 112 damage with out any sort of damage boost when you are up close to an enemy. This has a penalty, as you take about 30-50 self damage, so you will only see this when someone suddenly jumps in your face and you hit them.
Normally you can expect 100-80 damage direct rockets.

Damage fall off calculations

Rockets have damage fall off, meaning the further away the enemy is, the lower the damage you will do. Direct rockets can fall off to 48 damage and splash damage can reduce this to only 24! Rockets are most effective at medium to close ranges because of this.

Damage falloff is the damage the rocket will do the moment the rocket hits the target based on your distance at that moment. So you fire a rocket far away jump forward and the rocket will do more damage even though you fired it further away. Where you are when the rocket hits matters, not from where it is fired

TBC

To deal 112 damage to the target you need to be 90hu - 48hu. The closest you can to a target is about 48hu.

The distance to get a 90 damage direct rocket is set at 512hu away from the target.

Damage falloff caps out at 923hu away from the target, where all damage will deal 47.52 damage per direct rocket

Because of rounding, you will first see 48 damage at 900 hu away. It looks this far away:

Crits and fall off

Remember - crit rockets have NO damage falloff. So if you fire a crit and it directs someone, its 270 every time. The minimum crit damage you can do is 135 (169hu away from explosion). This is why you should use the kritz on a soldier and not a scout, because explosive weapons have all the damage in 1 projectile! Scouts fire 9 pellets and all 9 pellets have to hit to do 180 damage at range.

Crit damage is calculated from the base damage (90) and since crits triple the damage, 90x3 = 270 for a maximum damage rocket disregarding enemy damage penalties.

Minimum distance to dodge a rocket?

Those maths lessons weren't entirely useless! We can calculate the minimum distance you need to be from a soldier to dodge a rocket. There are some key things we have to know:

• Rockets travel at 1100 hammer units per second
  
• The blast from the rocket is a sphere extending in all directions equally
  
• Beyond 169 hammer units, damage is ZERO
  
• Soldier has a view height of 68 hammer units and rockets come from this height
  
• As soon as a rocket collides with a surface, it deals damage

Ok, lets get started!

First, lets go basic - you are a scout 1 v 1ing a soldier on flat ground on granary second. Technically speaking, what is the distance you can stay at so you deal the most damage to the soldier but dodge all of his rockets? Lets do some maths.

If a rocket is colliding with the floor, the vertical speed does not matter, only the horizontal speed. The steeper the angle the soldier fires at, the more ground you can cover (assuming hes an equal distance away), so the better chance you have of dodging the rocket!

If we want to have the rocket do ZERO damage, we must move 170 hammer units away. To find out the time that takes we simply divide 170 by the speed the scout moves at (400hu/s) and we get the time taken to move away. The all we need to do is calculate the speed of the rocket based on its angle and use that rocket speed to find out the distance it covers. Simple right? Well not as simple as you expect.

Since we are perpendicular to the ground, we can use right angle triangles. Sin, cos and tan!

We know the height the rocket is coming at, but we need to know either the angle the rocket is coming at or the total distance travelled.


We can ignore the vertical velocity and the angle in the previous image is the same one here.


Time to solve equations.

speed = distance / time

We need speed and time to work out distance. Time is easy to work out. 170/400hu = 0.425 seconds. This is the time for the scout to move 170 hammer units when he is moving at 400hu/s

Now lets work out the other component.

Because these are similar triangles, all angles in the triangles are the same. So we can use trigonometry and the first triangle to find out the rest of the values.

The angle of the rocket is equal to

θ = arctan(68/x)

This is the inverse of tan. Remember opposite/adjacent sides to the angle in question get the angle.

x is the distance the rocket travels.

The horizontal velocity of the rocket (Vh) is equal to

Vh = cosθ x 1100hu/s

Cos is adjacent side divided by hypotneuse (the longest side of the triangle). Re arrange the formula to get it!

Now we substitute in the numbers! replace θ with arctan(68/x) so

Vh = cos(arctan(68/x)) x 1100hu/s

Remember speed = distance / time. Multiply speed by time to get the distance! The time is the number we worked out before!

x = cos(arctan(68/x)) x 1100hu/s x 0.425s

Now this is where it gets a bit complicated. We need to use trigometric identities to substitute the values in and solve the equation. I won't tell you how to do it because its boring! But if you want to know how I did it, there you go.

At the end, the result is:
x^2 = (935^2/4) - 4624
Square root the answer and we get about 462.53 hammer units.

The minimum distance where you can dodge all damage from a soldier as scout is 462.53 hammer units. That's not far at all. Combine this with double jump and air strafing and you can easily dodge soldiers rockets as your total velocity is higher.


But how far is 462.53 hammer units in game?
Well check out my video and you can see for yourself!

There is one small thing though... What if you are stood still and then you need to move to dodge a rocket. How far can you be?

Well it gets even more complicated with me having to figure out the acceleration the scout has.
Here is the image for your viewing pleasure


Scout accelerates 3200 hammer units a second every second. That sounds like a lot until you realise it happens for 0.125 seconds. I bet you can't even react that fast to notice. In this time period, the scout moves 25 hammer units. Yep, 25 hammer units. But when we are so close to the soldier, each hammer unit counts and could throw everything off!

Put simply, if you are stood still and you want to dodge a rocket, you must stand at least 531.921 hammer units away to have a chance of taking 0 damage. And that assumes you have a 0 second reaction time! Never stand still I guess! (though standing still can trick soldiers you are starting to move in the other direction - we are all human!)

This can be applied to all classes! Just replace the values with your class' movement speed. Check the TF2 wiki for those!

Rocket Angles

Depending on what rocket launcher you equip and the settings you use, the angle your rocket comes out will be different.

The known rocket launchers to have different angles

Rocket launcher, liberty launcher, black box, Air Strike

All of these launchers from what I can tell fire 11 units offset from the soldiers head to the right and are fired to the center of the screen always unless you are 176 hammer units or closer to the target, where it will veer slightly to the left.

The Original

The original rockets come literally straight out of his face. Makes sense as your view is straight in your face. What you see is what you get - no funky business going on here

The Cow mangler 5000

The cow mangler has slightly different angles compares to the regular rocket launcher.

TBC

Beggars Bazooka

Who knows what angles they come out from. As far as i know, the angles are the same for the regular rocket launchers but have a random deviation from the center by about 0-3 degrees.

Flip View models

The setting you use in your options also affects your rocket placement. If you flip your viewmodels, not only is your view model different, but the way your rocket is aimed is also different. For example. rockets will come out from the left side of the screen instead of the right.


This could be a huge advantage in some areas of maps, as you are able to spam behind the corner and not be hit.

The competitive community prefers The Original because it is easier to aim and you can spam down all slight lines easily as rockets come from the center of the screen - you will probably never hit your self on a corner because whatever you can see you can shoot!

Hitboxes

How projectile hitboxes differ from hitscan

Unlike hitscan hitboxes where you have a hitbox for your head, your body, legs etc, you have a generic box where all projectiles can hit you. This is commonly referred to as the projectile hitbox.

This hitbox often extends far out from the player actually appears to be and its axis is locked to the world, meaning no matter if you turn left right up or down the hitbox wont change orientation.

If an explosion interacts with this hitbox, the target will take damage. You could potentially use this to your advantage as player models can be deceptive and extend out more on the corners that normal.

This is may be how you can dodge some rockets and it goes through your face sometimes seemingly or a rocket may be nowhere near you but direct you anyway, because your projectile hitbox is "landlocked".

It is a 48hux48hux82hu cuboid. It is much more computationally intensive to model in any other way so the cuboid landlocked approach is taken


Notice even though the medic has turned the hitbox still remains in the same orientation


This projectile hitbox is much bigger than hitscan and is not specialised for each class.

Knockback

TBC

Aiming rockets

TBC

Practice!

To be good at anything you need experience, which comes with practice. Aiming will turn into something you dont even think about. It should be sub conscious so you can focus on the game and your movement.

'Practice practice practice!' - fatal1ty

There are loads of ways to practice aiming rockets. It could be adjusting the way you think about aiming, how you move or position yourself or by grinding.

There's one thing for certain though - play TF2 to get better at TF2. Don't play aimboosters or aim simulators. Play the real game. It won't bite, promise.

Jump Maps

Playing TF2 jump maps helps you in every aspect of the game, but also in aiming.
Reducing the flick shots you do can help your aim be more precise as jump maps requires smooth aiming with occasional flicks. The ones that will help you a lot are the wallshot jumps and pogo jumps as it will teach you where the rockets come out of your screen.

I recommend trying jump academy2 for a diverse set of jumps for you to try, plus there are plenty of walkthroughs on youtube!

MGE

This is the next best thing - practicing 1 on 1 battles with another soldier or scout. Going against a map or bot can be good, but theres nothing better than 1 v 1ing actual people in actual maps. Add up and start fragging :)

To find a server, just type "mge" into the map filter and join up!

DM mod

Depending on the type of person you are, you may prefer DM mod. You won't improve as quickly on DM compared to MGE due to how chaotic DM can be, but it is a more realistic scenario compared to MGE. I do not suggest doing this.

Training maps

These are okay for controlled tests or if you are very inexperienced. TR_walkway is a good map for practising on bots that move in a straight line. You can also configure it to launch them up in the air to practice airshots. It is a good map in general for aiming on every class (except sniper).

Tyler rocket shooting is also a good map for practising juggling and airshotting bots. Have a go.

Don't worry about aiming!

The more you worry about aiming the worse you'll get at the game. Think about it. Would you rather dodge every single shot or hit a marginally better rocket than normal? You want to focus on your movement and let your muscle memory and subconscious do the aiming.

Turn off mouse acceleration in windows and ingame! (MarkC pointer fix in google, m_rawinput 1 in console)

Reduce your sensitivity to reduce flick shots

Have fun and play the game!

[Kiddley]

Thank you bro, I've been searching for hours on how big the god damn explosion is for my Custom Weapons 3 rocket launcher. I needed to increase the size but the stat I am using requires me to manually set it instead of being able to increase it by a percentage.

[fakeman]

fixed error with new video

[Masztufa]

you're right, i somehow managed to skip that part. Thanks for the quick reply!

[fakeman]

ammendment to the blast radius

[fakeman]

Added projectile hitboxes.

[fakeman]

if you read at the bottom, i say to turn m_rawinput to 1 and also use the markc mouse fix :)

mouse accel does not always kill your aim. many quake players use mouse accel and i used to use it fine. It's all about preference but for most people turning it off is a good thing

[fakeman]

Added structure for proj hitboxes

[fakeman]

ye but it should be possible to get close to it.
if i cant work it out ill just do a scattergraph and get a close guess. plus its visual. people like visual =)

[calc]

I hate to say it man but my pc is messed atm, so it’s hard for me to do any testing. Also as for the calc for dmg falloff it’s hard to get a number since valve hasn’t released the official numbers for the splash modifier, which is important when talking about the rocket

[fakeman]

yes i still need to get the damage fall off and knockback sections done